November 16, 2010

Book Trailers (and also Zita)

Trailers are an interesting thing because (for the great majority of books out there) their task is to translate text to visual. And that's difficult! Especially since we're so used to seeing movies with elaborate casting and costuming and all of that jazz.

Some people who make trailers get around peoples' expectations of seeing movies by actually making all of that jazz for the trailer. Which makes for fun trailers -- if you do them well -- but they're also expensive and complicated.

Another way to do approach trailers is just to do it with words. I actually like these better, because who doesn't like storytelling with words? They feel like they're puzzles or something.

Usefully for comics, when you've got art in a book, that makes trailers work much better than when all you have to start out with is one cover image and 300+ pages of text. (This works for picture books, too.) The fact I work in comics makes me feel lucky whenever anyone down the hall (where MacKids lives) is grappling with teen novel trailers.

Also, here's a new trailer for our upcoming Zita the Spacegirl. Warning for slighly earworm-y* music!

*The internet tells me that in Portuguese the term for this translates to 'ear chewing gum.' That is just awesome!